You Make Me Sick
by Twisted Trans-Sister
Summary: While dying by his hand was a fair thing, living by him was worth having to kiss someone with a face full of tears... Nny x OC one-shot.
1. You Make Me Sick

Summary: While dying by his hand was a fair thing, living by him was worth having to kiss someone with a face full of tears... Nny x OC one-shot.

_You make me sick_  
_I want you and I'm hatin' it_  
_Got me lit like a candlestick_  
_Get too hot when you touch the tip, _  
_I'm feelin' it, I gotta getta grip _  
_And it's drivin me crazy _  
_baby don't you quit_  
_Can't get enough of it_  
_You got me goin' again_  
_Baby, you got me goin' again_  
_You make me sick…_

It was the worst idea in the world for those two to meet. I mean...really. But Devi had that insatiable inner hatred for her somehow and arranged it...she didn't know. For all she knew, a blind date was for a blind person. Maybe that's why she showed up wearing a blindfold as to be courteous to her visually challenged fiend of a date. He asked what it was for; she simply explained she thought it was the polite thing to do.

"Wait...how can you see that?"

_He was doing 8-0 on the freeway  
In the 6 double O, bumpin' Isley  
He was gettin' kinda close, kinda touch-ay  
Cuz he had a little too much Hennessey_

She came a hair's width of getting killed. But someone thought it was funny to trip her the same instance, a stranger's foot caught on the back of her chair. Her feet flailed and felt that would-be-fatal cut of the steak knife. Perhaps a steakhouse on the first date was a mistake. And wearing a blindfold. And agreeing to date in the first place.

"Fuck you, you think you're so fucking-"

She cut off his line of speech, choosing not to listen to her attempting murderer cuss loudly. Rather, she made off like a bullet. Well less like a bullet and more like a blind, wild shooting man. But judging from the screams of the restaurant's patrons, at least he could go home saying he had something like a good time. She so sure about that...she was too busy apologizing to all the people in the mistaken apartments in terms like "Sorry, sorry, wrong room...No I don't want to take that baby thank you sorry sorry..."

_He told me that he wanna go home,  
with me up on the hill to my condo  
Told me he would keep it all on the low-low  
But I told him, "boo, I don't really know though"…_

He snuck into her apartment, attempted to kill her, and kissed her before finally learning her name. Effie. Fortunately she never used it much and gave him the thumbs up, "Yes you can bury me without an engraving or anything."

Kissing? Now that was an accident. He zipped when he should've zapped and Effie had the most deadly case of clumsiness and after all that tangle and fuss over trying to slit her throat he was squished almost pleasantly against her mouth. He tasted like a fresh cherry Fizz Wizz and once he regained a bit of his sense and pulled away she gave the last request for one in grape. They left...and were pleased to find the Fizz Wizz machine still running.

"I'm Nny by the way..." he said. Something was productive about Fizz Wizzes and the exchanging of names. Effie merely shook his hand and kicked rocks all the way back home while he whistled loudly, his throat fresh and shrill as it was refreshed with the icy cold beverage. Effie forgot about dates and kissing and asked for tips on whistling.

_He got closer to me...it started gettin' deep_  
_He had me in a zone when he started to show me things_  
_I never saw before_

More than once Nny and Effie left for a Fizz Wizz and a whistling lesson. Effie had all the time in the world to pay attention to Nny's mouth _(such a nice thing really, not too big and plumply like a frog and not so ordinary that it put her to sleep)_ and to improve. By the end of the week she was already whistling the tunes to the classics. It annoyed everyone and made Nny cackle with laughter as she recalled whistling to the point that it bled ears.

He mentioned the Doughboys and Nailbunny once...how it was hard to keep a wall wet with blood and how very annoying it was when the people in his basement got too loud. Effie was prompted to buy him a blindfold and ear plugs and wished him a better night's sleep. The blindfold didn't work, much too silky and silly for Nny to wear even in private. But the ear plugs were a nice change. When they vanished, Nny merely shrugged and pestered Effie to buy him some more.

_Baby was smooth but I knew it__ was game_  
_Hell-of-a-cool but you men are the same_  
_The way he licked his lips and touched my hips_  
_I knew that he was slick…_

Effie tried not to laugh around Nny, poor thing he was so sensitive. Only Effie was soft enough and crazy enough to call him that, "Poor thing, poor dear, here let me help you." But enough of Nny is a man and he hates it when she's all squishy and pitying and feminine...he just threatens her again and again until she begins to cry quietly...something he's obviously unaccustomed to. Something was natural about wailing and weeping loudly, so her faint sniffles and half-hearted wipes at her face were unusual.

He got weird stares when she cried. Like a second thought about something. He tilts his head in bereaved wonder, then returns to whatever he was doing...occasionally looking back as Effie sniffled and hugged her pillow as he fiddled about in her room. It was almost two o'clock in the morning...if she didn't stay by his side he would be prone to fits of mourning and self-pity. Effie needed him; the city was too big and too lonely to survive in it all alone.

Devi didn't like her much anyway. She saw too much happiness in Effie's life to like it.

_In the 6 now, so hot_  
_Gotta pull all the windows down_  
_Eyes lead and I'm thinkin' bout the sheets now_  
_Wonderin' really should I take it there now_

Effie never told him about her fear of visiting other people's houses, but Nny found out anyway. Even as she screamed and protested that she'd just make a mess, he carried her none-too-gently back home. She calmed down after promises of Cheese Nubs settled her into the couch. He'd very courteously offered her a dead dog as a pillow to lie down on. She declined equally politely and made him a bit angry. He'd been angry the night of her first assassination attempt, so he tried again. Effie let herself be clumsy and accidentally fell into another kiss that made him howl in frustration.

Effie didn't mind. While dying by his hand was a fair thing, living by him was worth having to kiss someone with a face full of tears. But it was equally uncomforting that he couldn't get too happy sometimes. Happiness made him blind...if he didn't preserve it in that one flash of jubliance it may go away forever. Effie was forced to couple her attempts at cheering him up with failure.

So she spilt his bag of Cheese Nubs to the floor where cockroaches eagerly whisked their antennae over the feast. Nny could never catch Effie when she ran.

_He told me he would make it worth it_  
_Again, how many times have I heard this_  
_Kinda funny, but I wasn't even nervous_  
_Well his slick-ass lines were kinda working…_

Nny and Effie were a couple in the loosest and most unbelieveable sense of the word. Effie had to make all of her even remotely romantic moves accidental with a protective back-up...and Nny didn't do anything romantic besides make her cry. He liked kissing her then...when she was hot with tears and softened with misery. The dribble of the salty water from her eyes and the slight sniffle only encouraged him to pinch her in the most painful places he knew and press more firmly than ever.

"I think there's something good with the 'ee' sound in a name..." he mused once. "All the best people who survived me have it."

"_Nny_," sang Effie.

"_Effie_," he echoed.

"_Squee_..."

"_Devi_-"

It cut off. Neither of them were comforted by this; Nny because he knew just how badly Devi despised him now for forcing her into seclusion, for promising a painful fate. Effie...because not a week after Devi realized the proximity of the two did she walk straight up to Effie and smack her. Was this the envy of a woman Effie had heard so much about?

They didn't say another word. But in the thick rain, Nny stood under his holey umbrella while Effie let herself get soaked. She'd be shivering, sick, and freezing tomorrow but this was the only way to kiss him without suffering.

Her lips itched with a kiss. Hot and cold. Wet and dry. Happy and happier.

_I felt my knees get weak...his body was callin' me_  
_Just couldn't take the heat_  
_Anyway it was 2 or 3, I had to get off the streets_

Devi suffered. In her unique angry fashion she was suffering. It made Nny uncomforted, his messages meant absolutely nothing to Devi and Devi would have been happy to see Nny suffer at her hands for once.

Effie made Devi cry her happiest yet. Devi had slapped her, set her up with her (_hers hers she reminds herself of this all the time now_) homicidal maniac, and more than once was despicable about Effie's fate. But with a tug of the hand that said she wouldn't be swayed by death threats or physical violence, she took Devi out on the town. Devi trembled in mixed rage and a stubborn sort of happiness while clutching the bundle of carnations as Effie held her hand and led her through the spiced airs of the Arabic restaurant, the mall, and finally the park where Devi decided that rage and sorrow were a pain in the ass and just burst into noisy sobs.

Effie patted her back and gave her some chocolate while Devi laughed about her first successful date being with a girl...of all things.

_Baby was cool but I knew it was game_  
_Said, he was too schooled to be screamin' my name_  
_Even though we made the best of it_  
_I still told him this..._

Nny stayed far away when Effie suffered her first episode of delusional fevers. For hours she sat crying and hot in her apartment, utterly nude save for one appropriately fire red sheet, while flames licked and tickled around her vision. She crawled on the floor and was snot-faced for days, waking up to the terrible crust of mucus on her face and a ring of acidic tears around her eyes as her temperature flared and flared.

She clenched her fist for hours at a time, terrified that if she couldn't even hold a fist together that Nny wouldn't be the one to kill her after all.

Whatever possessed Nny to carry her to the emergency room, to threaten the doctors and wave his favorite blade around to get some results was beyond Effie. She merely gasped in the artificial chill of her room, no longer making a fist as she whimpered at the press and prick of needles injecting her cure. But it was okay. Nny said it was okay to clench his hand for as long as she wanted...and even to hold his favorite stabbing knife around some. She didn't care for the knife particularly, but was handy to know that if she was about to approach Death's door, Nny was there to secure a good, clean murder.

_I want you and I'm hatin' it_  
_Got me lit like a candlestick_  
_Get too hot when you touch the tip, _  
_I'm feelin' it, I gotta getta grip _  
_And it's drivin me crazy baby don't you quit_  
_Can't get enough of it_  
_You got me goin' again_  
_Baby, you got me goin' again_  
_You make me sick…_

It was a lonely two o'clock. Effie and Nny were sitting on the roof of his car, staring out over Nny's favorite bluff. Effie bit mechanically into a jelly pastry while Nny sucked at a Brain Freezy, not really tasting it but doing it because it was there and it would be a waste otherwise.

"I went swimming on a starry night once..." Effie sighed. "Like floating in space."

Nny replied how wonderful it would be to go over them. Effie agreed, before pointing out the sea. "You see?" she said, lips smeared with powdering sugar and strawberry filling, "It's just like the stars. Even better."

That night, they went for a last swim. With a sigh like a job well done, Nny carried a gun, keeping it dry as they waded. Nny was not quite so bold as to skinny-dip, but he was pleased to see the white glow of Effie's skin in the water. They weren't even above the stars yet and she was already making the change. The bones of her ribs, under-nourished from the now-and-then diet of gas station food, curved like the crescent moon. There was the faint reminder of the smiles on the Doughboys but he shook it off. Best not to disturb the moment.

"Wait up." he said quietly, pulling her close as she nuzzled into his neck with the smooth barrel of the gun pressed against her skull. "I swear I'll be right behind you."

_Pulling the trigger was easy._


	2. Prequel: Sober

Author's Note: A bit of a prequel explaining Effie's story, from her point of view. For once I'm actually describing how she looks.

Everyday seems to start in the evening. So every night I wake up and its "_Hello world I'd like it if you were a little gentler today than yesterday. No? Alright...I suppose I'll just have to manage_."

Is it really so strange that I start up conversations with everyone like that? It must be, elsewise I wouldn't hear snickering every time I turned my back. Or recieved quite so many invitations to the sanatorium as I did. Of all the kids at my old school who recieved such invitations (_I do say there were a lot_) I think I recieved the most after we all gratefully never saw each other again. There were crazy Katies, emo Larries, punk Harries, and anorexic Annies. I was a Stefanie...known to all as Effie.

For a while my motto was "_Ask and thou shall recieve_". But after a while I realized, with a slow and unfortunately stupid kind of revelation, that no one was listening, I just went on acting like they heard me precisely. It delved a little into madness when I imagined their response, even if it was as rude as a blatant, "_Shut the fuck up or I will shove **staples** up your nose_," kind of imagined response. I tried to stop but the stone had begun its decline down the hill and there was nothing I could do.

There was no solace at my house with my family. My father saw everything through rose-colored glasses, and sometimes mint-colored or aqua-colored, and insisted I was fine, everything was fine, the world was just fine, fine, fine. My mother jumped at the sound of the slightest squeak or rattle on the door handle; I couldn't approach her with a dillemma like that. So after a woeful 13th, really the worst age to be in your life, I was stuck on my own. My childhood had been so full of joy it had used up its qutoa as it made me who I am. All that was left was the not-so-joyful things, like growing up, and learning how to do chores and want to work adequately, and realizing that Starbucks was a terrible place to work and that only smart people knew how to eat well and cheap. I'm not so smart, but I think I could manage for a while.

The first incident that I was doomed to readjust time and time again, started out in front of a Taco Smell. Because like every ordinary, slight-dimmed, Caucasian girl; I needed a pair of shoes. Next to the music store was my destination, and once I had a soft set of slip-on shoes (_ignoring the fact now that I'd be accused of lesbianism for wearing such **cozy** shoes_), I prepped myself for going to the Taco Smell across the street for an evening lunch.

I think it was the blood splatters and screams that were ensuing from the said restaurant that made me consider Italian.

_"Oh dear God!"_

_"My eyes! I can't see my eyes!"_

_"Aggh!"_

_"Noo!"_

_"Eek!"_

_"Somebodeee! Pull this churrito out of my ass!"_

And other such shrieking.

Finally, coated in a enough blood to dye all his clothes a deep maroon, someone stepped out. He was skinnier than I was, barely taller, but he had a "bam!" factor that gave him a presence. Put him a crowd full of people, make him an utter stranger, and you'd still be able to see him admist the blur of everyone around him. He wasn't handsome, or even cute like some of the most effeminante boys, but I couldn't help but think to myself. _"Hell he'd do."_

He stalked off, and I was left standing next to a formerly unseen and awestruck man, gaping in delight at the carnage he'd just seen. "Woooweee!" he squealed like a skinny pig, "What an artist!" He had to be an adult with his height, but he was covered in pimples with oily and ruffled hair, and gave off the presence of a teenager. He looked around for more inspiration, his eyes falling on me. "Uh oh," I said aloud, before taking off down the street. Those easy shoes helped alot as I ran faster than the inspired man who whined as he chased, calling out- "_Aww come on! I won't rape you if you're a lesbian_!" No, no, I was perfectly fine with living as it was. New shoes and all that.

I ordered Italian after all, the mush of overcooked noodles devoured easily as I ate alone in my little apartment. I didn't care much for Italian, but the bread was an irresistable aroma, soft and warm and fragrant. In other words, completely unlike anything my life had been.

The next days went on like normal. I watched over a post office for the night shift, helping everyone who waited at the last minute to mail their bills or send blackmail. But the most interesting thing I would do was talk to my reflection. Yes, talk. Didn't I tell you how often I do this?

I suppose she looks like me, we both have the same curly hair. We both have watery grey eyes, although I've often argued with Other Effie that her's are a little more green (_I swear I swear it's a compliment_!). And a lifetime of dark days and indoor habits has left our skin pale and blue skimmed with nerves and veins if you look closely enough. I rather like my bone structure best; its the only thing I can claim to be utterly natural and my own. My hair? Years without changing shampoo brands. My eyes? Years of tears over the littlest things (_there's a dead racoon sitting by the road, poor thing he doesn't even have a grave now_). My skin...my abandonment of the sun, of my childhood, of assuming I always had someone with a ready ear.

But I'd always have my good bones. Even if my flesh were to shrivel into a comparison of a concentration camp survivor, they'd be beauteous.

The Other Effie was difficult and a braggart. She claimed she could do more to herself as a reflection than I could ever do as a real person. But that's what she wants to be...real. When I pin my hair up to the left, she doesn't want hers to be forced to pin it up to the right. When I wear something with words, she doesn't want them turned into gibberish on her chest. She's also incredibly pitiful and teary-eyed, moving me to fits of crying in the bathroom.

I did anticipate other company though. It would be mighty disappointing if all I had was company that made me cry.

Mr. Vargas. He was the school councilor at a strict private school across town, and every Wendsday he came mail things for his assignments. He was a good guy, a zealot without the shrieking preachings of other zealots that took up boxes on street corners, and mild-mannered. It disrupted the line when we would talk, but talk we did. A good guy. A really, truly good guy. I once asked him why there were so few in the world, because I could and asking such an honest question would merit and honest answer. "Because its very hard. Talk to any philosopher and they'll agree that it's extremely difficult to do the right thing all the time. It wears on you like surf on cliff rocks, chipping at you steadily. But someone does it and they don't regret it."

I smiled, a rare thing since I usually just looked like a half-wit to everyone I talked to and replied. "Am I nice?"

He died the day after I asked. He had never been given the chance to answer when a customer behind him jostled him and told to get the hell out. I found out because someone had brought him into the post office with his address. Whoever did it left his remains, bloody and a inevitablely dead mess, in a big glass jar. They'd taken special care to pick off the label and tape a new one in a messy scrawl. His glasses were cracked and taped to the front of it. I should have screamed and cursed and uttered profanity to the skies but that was not my duty. I was too much of a civil servant to do that now. I simply picked up the jar and told the boss I was doing a delivery this time. I walked all the way to his home and opened the door...surprisingly unlocked.

It was a lonely and forlorn place without him. I could feel the history of his presence, pictures from his student's art classed tacked up on the walls and the kitchen table tidily organized with his school work. A tidy place, so cold and empty. He had no one else to live with him, no family or friends or even a single pet. Clean dishes he'd most likely done that morning sat in their drying rack. This morning he'd woken up alive and alone. Now he had a guest and was dead.

I surmised he though I was nice that night. It was very hard to take him home the way he was and sit there all alone. I hugged his jar, peering at the cracked bones, innards, flesh and blood. It gleamed a sickly red in the moonlight and I ended up falling asleep on the couch. This was so saddening I couldn't even cry. His funeral was void of even a preist, and this was a man who full-bodily believed in God. A gravestone was set and the grumbling groundsman dug his hole, a pathetic three feet deep as there was no coffin or full body, just an old glass jar. I laid him down and tried my best to pray...but I didn't know how. So I sang an old nursery rhyme I knew only the words too, the melody silly and made-up.

_Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye_  
_Four and twenty blackbirds baked into a pie_  
_When the pie was opened, they all began to sing_  
_Now wasn't that a pretty dish to set before the king?_

_The King was in his counting house, counting out his money_  
_The Queen was in the parlor eating bread and honey_  
_The Maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes_  
_Along there cam a blackbird and he snipped off her nose_

I could only guess I was crazy too, for singing something so ridiculous. Mr. Vargas' death and my little nursery rhyme affected me greatly that night, and I had a dream that someone had taken up his jar and slathered him all over a piece of toast like raspberry jam to make me cry. Blackbirds swarmed my vision before turning into Mr. Vargas who wore a crown made of queen chess pieces and asked in a metronome voice, "_Am I nice? Am I nice_?"

I met Devi through work. Meaning she had work for me to do and I was compelled to do it. I had changed my job...the people at the post office had begun to melt into bloody jars in my sight and I couldn't bear another day at work with tears in my eyes. Now I worked at the bookstore as a clerk, and also as a go-between for Devi who wrote advertisements for the place now. For extra she paid me to buy her groceries and bring them home-she had undergone a horrific near death experience after she suffered yet another unsuccessful date. I vaugely remembered the night I witnessed the mass slaughter at Taco Smell and wondered "Hell he'd do" outloud, inciting a scowl from Devi as I helped put away her groceries. She loathed me because I was so dim-witted I never truly suffered. That was the falling point of Devi; she was not stupid all the time, merely when it came to dating boys. She was very clever on everything else, which led to her contemplation of her suffering, which made her bitter (_which made me pipe down and take my reward of thirty bucks when I was done_) and she saw too much happiness in my half-conscious life.

"I am **not** your friend," she growled once after I attempted a conversation.

"I never asked-" I tried to begin but then she threw a blob of paint at me. The result was sticky purple paint on her hands and all over her wall. I felt a surge of pride; when it came to track, dodgeball, and life, I never lose. Devi sputtered angrily and screamed at me in a way that made her look like a bird of prey, and I high-tailed it out of there as I explained that Devi was not quite done with the paint job for the new shop front.

I was happy, right? I had work and I wasn't starving. I suppose I could use more, but then I look into shopfronts and realize I don't need a thing that they sell inside. But I was also miserable. If it was Other Effie, who made me cry, or the jar of Mr. Vargas who gave me nightmares, or Devi who sought my eventual destruction, whom I depended on for friendship...then perhaps I did hold onto some of my misery. I enjoyed a clear and witless childhood, happy in wondering only what I would have for my three meals. But then I had to grow up and put some brains in my head...and it was so difficult. I had to think on everything I had done that day, and the day before, and the day before that and so on. It left me brain-dead as I walked around, seeking simple work.

Was I happy? Was I nice? Was I miserable?

It was then Devi who swept all of my questions away with a proposal. I had the urgings to be good to her and ease her bad tempers, but she still had it out for me. However, perhaps the prompting of her failing dates moved her to become a matchmaker. She told me she had arranged a blind date with someone she'd known. I was excited, "Oh how nice. Should I wear a blindfold to be politie?"

I'd always thought that way. Blind dates were for blind people. Devi smiled unnaturally. "Perfect." she said with a simper. "Just perfect."

The eve of the date I prepared. I gave good and thought-out excuses to my boss, cleaned my clothes and changed the shampoo for the first time in twenty one years. I wore my old prom dress, a green cotton one with sheep embroidered around the waist. And because it was green and I was being fashionable for once, I wore the same soft shoes I had bought so long ago, only this time I dyed them a deep purple.

As I stood before the steakhouse, a slip of paper giving my directions I pulled out the purple silk of the blindfold, binding it tightly around my eyes as I gave my name to the waiter. Being blind was a unique experience...I could only fell the anchor of the things around me like a pulsing warmth...the fiber of the carpeted floor, the slightest breeze from the waiter walking in front of me, the growing and fading conversations between the table. Finally I felt for the space of the chair, my shoes bumping against another pair underneath the table, and I did my best to beam at my visually-challenged date.

"Hello." I whispered.

There was a familiar presence sitting across the table, I could feel it as the toe of my shoe was gently nudged against the leather of a boot. I think I had felt it all along...the day I witnessed blood and agony like nothing else and feeling like it was as simple as watching a movie...the day that someone had left the mottled and ruined remains of Mr. Vargas on the stoop of the post office...the day I met Devi locked away in her cell of an apartment.

I felt it again. Through his voice and his creeping rage that seemed to bubble up from and unknown resevoir as he asked in an offended tone- "Why are you blindfolded?"

"I'm nice," I replied, remembering old questions finally answered from my own revelations and conversations with a miserable girl in the mirror. "I'm only trying to be nice."


End file.
